


Swallow the Moon

by deepestfathoms



Category: Six - Marlow/Moss
Genre: Aimie!Kat is a fucking asshole, Ambiguous/Open Ending, Angst and Feels, Bullying, Bullying Based On Eye Color, Dehumanization, Discrimination, Fever, Gen, Guilt, Hearing Voices, Jodie!Kat is guilty, Lots Of Attention To Eyes, Maternal Instinct, Painting, apologizing, entitlement, moon metaphors, sorry K Howard stans lol
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-19
Updated: 2020-05-19
Packaged: 2021-03-02 22:46:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,377
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24264568
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deepestfathoms/pseuds/deepestfathoms
Summary: Katherine owes someone an apology.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 30





	Swallow the Moon

**Author's Note:**

> (Read Katherine as Jodie!Katherine)
> 
> Remember back when Aimie, Millie, and Maiya left SIX and everyone was writing fics about their queens disappearing and then being reincarnated again in their new bodies? Well, this is like an AU where instead of Sophie!Kat coming back after Aimie!Kat disappears, it’s Jodie!Kat. And yes, this is still West End, so everyone else is the same, aside from Courtney!Anne and whatever the new Cathy’s name is! Although they never make an appearance in this. But yeah!

Past Katherine would never ever in a billion years turn up on her “rival’s” doorstep with a platter of brownies. Past Katherine would have downright refused to go, and if she was forced to, she would have made sure the brownies were made with an entire carton of salt and spoiled milk and expired eggs. Past Katherine would have dressed the front door with glitter that would never wash out, just to attract even more unwanted attention to the one who always tried to steal her mother away.

But Present Katherine didn’t want to do any of those things. In fact, she was a little repulsed that she ever thought about trying to give a lonely girl food poisoning.

It’s strange, she thinks, that all it took to change her morals was temporary death. Ever since her second reincarnation, she felt different. She looks different, too, now in the body of an adult (and very muscular, mind you) version of herself. She swore she was even older than Jane; it appeared to be the body she never got to live in. And, with it came a really, REALLY matured brain. She realized she didn’t even need Jane anymore, she attended therapy on her own, she wasn’t that afraid of men anymore because she knew her rock-like fists could knock their teeth in if they tried anything (don’t quote her on that—she was just hoping they were as strong as they looked). And she no longer thought about wanting to tear down the musical’s music director just for kicks and giggles. Guilt was left in the absence of the devilish mischief.

And so, that’s why she was on the doorstep of her ex-rival (God did she really consider this girl her rival? How terrible was she?). In a rainstorm. Holding a platter of brownies. She told the universe that the storm really didn’t help, but, honestly, it was kind of what she deserved.

Katherine perked up when she heard the lock click. The door soon opened, Joan took one look at her, then slammed it shut in her face.

Well. She kinda deserved that, too.

“Joan!” Katherine called desperately.

“Go away!” Joan shouted.

“Please, I just want to talk!”

The door flew open midknock and Katherine nearly rapped on Joan’s nose.

Before her stood an irritated, although quite small music director. Has Joan always been that short? And scrawny? Or was it just because Katherine was just now so much more muscular and tall and-

Joan growled, as if she could hear Katherine’s ego inflating and nitpicking her own body.

“I wanna talk.” Katherine said again. “Please?”

Joan looked her up and down.

“You can frisk me if you’d like.”

Joan wrinkled her nose and made a disgusted face. She shook her head, muttered something about something else being ‘just great’, then turned around and stomped into the apartment. Katherine followed.

As much as she hated to admit it, Katherine was startled at how beautiful the flat was. The past version of her always assumed the music director’s home would be completely covered in pictures of Jane, but she didn’t see a hint of the silver queen anywhere. Instead, there were wooden carvings and colorful pottery, thriving potted plants and original paintings, polished deer antlers and clever little sculptures. The only light on in the place was an ocean driftwood scented candle and a lamp on the round table next to the couch. It was cozy in there, although a little lonely. Katherine wondered if all the carvings and statues were supposed to be poor replacements for real people.

“Well?” Joan crossed her arms and glared at Katherine. Her glare was never really all that threatening, but now that she was in a new body, Katherine found that it was completely ineffective. “Have you come to gloat about how much prettier you are than me? How much more people will like you now? How much Jane loves you even more?”

Startled, Katherine quickly said, “No. Not at all.”

Joan looked her up and down again, and Katherine took the chance to observe her, too.

Have you ever wondered what would come out if you were to throw every color of paint into a wood chipper? Well, Joan was that outcome. Her pale skin was covered in some kind of dust and there’s splinters and wood chips caught in her hair and in between her fingers and embedded under her fingernails. Red and yellow and orange paint was splattered across her face and torso, as if someone had melted the sunset in a cauldron and flung it all over her. Her eyes are like the moon over a frozen ocean- murky and scuffed, but still glittering in the light.

“I told you, I just want to talk.” Katherine said gently. “I made brownies.” She squinted at Joan and noticed a flush of dark pink beneath all the dirt and paint on her face. “Are you feeling alright?”

“Fine.” Joan grit, although she looked supremely uncomfortable with Katherine being in her house with her. “Put your brownies on the counter. But don’t expect me to eat them. Who knows what you put in them…”

Katherine wondered for a moment if she knew about her past self’s food poisoning plot. She winced and quickly set the tray down before going into the living room where Joan was. There was a half-finished painting of what seemed to be a flurry of moths sitting on the easel.

“It’s good.” She commented.

Joan looked over her shoulder at her, then immediately glanced away. She said something to herself again and retrieved a second easel, two blank canvases, and some more paintbrushes from a room next to the guest bathroom. She set the easel up and gave the canvas to Katherine.

“I like when my guests paint things,” She said gruffly, swapping her half-finished canvas out with the new one. “It’s like a game, I guess. You come over for the first time, you paint something.” She shrugged and swiped a blob of pink paint with a thin brush, making sure her easel was angled so that Katherine couldn’t see what she was making.

“That’s really cool!” Katherine said. “How many people have made stuff?”

Joan was silent for a moment.

“You’ll be the first.”

Katherine frowned. “Oh…”

They painted in silence for a long time. Katherine wasn’t sure how much time had passed, but it gave her time to rehearse everything she wanted to say to Joan. And, good lord, there was so much. She hoped the girl would let her get it all out before she was told to leave.

“Joan—”

Joan suddenly came sidling around her easel to see what Katherine had been painting. She took one look at the (badly painted) cats cuddling, snorted, then grabbed her own canvas and threw it at Katherine’s feet.

“This,” She pointed at it. “This is why I will NEVER be liked like you are.”

Katherine grimaced as she looked at the painting of a pale blue and moon silver screaming dragon getting its jaw horribly broken by a rusty jaw trap. Despite how gratuitous and gory it was, she had to admit that it was quite amazing. Joan really was a skilled artist.

Katherine carefully picked up the painting and set it on its easel to dry as Joan stormed into her kitchen. She didn’t go after the girl, knowing how unsettled and uneasy she was at the moment, and didn’t want to make that worse. So, she waited in front of her dripping cats—she knew she shouldn’t have painted them to be silver and pink. Even though she didn’t really view Jane as a mother anymore, it seemed that some parts of her still held onto that bond they shared.

She heard a noise from the kitchen—a cough and then what sounded like a sniffle. Some kind of instinct flared to life within her—something maternal, she realized. She had Motherly Senses?! Oh, that was SO COOL! She always wanted to be the caretaker for once…or maybe she didn’t and she just wanted to now. Either way, she didn’t care! She’s always wondered what it was like to have Mum Instincts—

There was another cough from the kitchen, this one much more watery and weak. The instincts flare again—THAT’S what it felt like. Worried and concerned and making her feel like she had to hold whatever was in distress.

“Joan?” She called out. “Is everything okay in there, hun?”

Did she just use a pet name on someone? Ohhh, she LOVED THIS BODY!!

“Yes,” Joan replied hoarsely. She came bustling out a moment later holding two cups of a steaming liquid. She set one on the dining table and then scurried to sit on the opposite side. Katherine quickly joins her at the table.

“I wanted to apologize.” Katherine said after a tense moment of silence between her and the girl. “For how I treated you before.”

Joan looked down at her cup with an unreadable expression- Anger? Guilt? Relief? Pain?

“It was awful of me to do to you, Joan.” Katherine went on. “I was immature and stupid and mean. I never should have treated you like that.”

“You called me a ‘weird little diamond’.” Joan pointed out grimly.

“Oh. Right. That.”

“And Moon Eyes.” Joan added. She ducked her head, as if she were trying to hide her eyes from sight. “That’s not really easy to forgive when it’s said enough…”

Katherine grimaced. She remembered when she had made up that nickname: It was a bad day, but for a stupid reason. She got mad when Joan gave Jane yet another painting and loudly referred to her with that title instead of her regular name. She apparently thought Joan’s eyes were too grey and too creepy and too much like a twin pair of stolen moons to be real. Or human.

“Oh god,” Katherine muttered. “That was- Oh, Joan, that was so terrible of me to do to you. It must have been awful…”

“It STILL IS awful.” Joan growled. “Can you even imagine being bullied for your eye color? You made me want to gouge my own eyes out!” She slammed her fists on the table and suddenly looked like she wanted to lunge across it and strangle Katherine.

Katherine gasped softly at that revelation. She gripped tightly at her heart with one hand, while the other remained flat on the table. Guilt was eating away at her like thousands of starving ants.

“I’m so sorry.” She said. “Really, I am.”

“So it really took dying again and switching bodies to realize what you did was wrong?” Joan asked. She wasn’t being accusatory, rather just curious.

“Unfortunately.” Katherine sighed. “I don’t know why I did it. Jealousy, maybe?”

Joan’s head snapped up. “Jealousy?” She echoed. “What do YOU have to be jealous about? You have EVERYTHING!”

Katherine nodded grimly. “I know.” She said, and she swore she heard the remnants of her past self screaming in her ears, telling her not to say that and not to give in to this little gnat. “I have a family and fame and friends and money and—”

“And Jane.” Joan murmured.

Katherine looked at her sadly. “And Jane.” She echoed. “That’s right.”

Silence settled between the two of them. Joan had her eyes closed and she was breathing deeply through her nose, like she was trying to keep herself calm from an oncoming panic attack. The flush beneath all the dirt suddenly looked a lot darker.

“I,” Katherine started, and she saw Joan open one moon eye to look at her.. “I just had to apologize. I want things to change. I want to make things okay.”

Joan nodded softly. She reached up a hand to scrub her eyes, and Katherine realized with a wrench of guilt that she seemed to be on the verge of tears.

“It’s just— I was so lonely.” She whispered. “You took Jane away from me. And I knew— _still know_ —that you needed her more than me, you have PTSD, you have a tragic backstory, you have to relive your trauma every night, but—” She put her head in her hands and shook it. “It didn’t change anything. I needed her, too. A-and I know she loved me—would love me— _still loves me_ —if I just got a chance with her.”

Katherine frowned.

 ** _Jane never loved this moonborn creep and you know it._** Her past self whispered. Her voice is higher pitched and younger like it used to be. Hearing it set her on edge. It was like the shell of the body she used to be in was right behind her, murmuring in her ears.

 _Shut up._ She growled.

 _ **You know it’s true.**_ Past Katherine merely said again. _**We’ve both heard Jane mutter about how much of a nuisance Moon Eyes is. You KNOW she’s never liked her.**_

Katherine desperately wants that to be false, but she knows it’s true. She remembered how Jane would call Joan an “annoying little weasel” under her breath and how she would toss all the gifts she got into her closet to rot, and god forbid Katherine would LAUGH when she did so. She laughed like the horrible, horrible person she was.

 _ **We’re not horrible.**_ Past Katherine said indignantly, and Katherine could already picture the way she used to ruffle herself up when being stubborn and brat. _**We’re right. And I’m NOT a brat by the way. And even if I was, which I’m not, that would make you one, too. So HAHA!!**_

 _I’m not you._ Katherine said. _Not anymore._

She ignored whatever her past self responded with and focused her eyes on Joan. The girl was looking down at her cup with a pitiful expression. When Katherine didn’t answer her, she must have thought she had gotten bored of her already.

“I’m sorry,” Was all Katherine could think to say at the moment. Joan looked up at her with her great big eyes and she swore she felt her past self shudder somewhere within her mind.

“Doesn’t matter now.” Joan muttered, gripping her cup tightly. She had to scrunch her eyes shut and take a few more breaths through her nose before she could speak up again. “I-I mean— You’re older. Jane—she doesn’t need to care for you anymore. She- maybe I can be-”

For a moment, she looks hopeful, but then the sadness takes over again. It replaces all her anger, too, until it was the only emotion she seemed to have.

 _Poor girl,_ Katherine thought.

 ** _Don’t pity her._** Past Katherine said.

_Stay out of my head._

**_OUR head._** Past Katherine stated. _ **I am you, no matter how hard you try to think otherwise.**_

“Joan—”

“I wanted to hurt you, you know.”

Katherine tensed at those words. She looked at Joan, who seemed as ashamed and as guilty as she was.

“I just wanted to— _hurt you._ ” She said again, her voice tight with pain and resentment. “I wanted you to know what it was like to be left alone and picked last and be unwanted by everyone you’ve ever known. I wanted you to Know what it felt like to have everything taken from you. I wanted for me to have everything for you to have nothing.” She looked up at Katherine and her eyes were like a dark lunar eclipse reflecting on fractured ice. “I wanted you to feel in your soul what you’ve done to me.”

 _ **But we HAVE!** _Past Katherine cried. _**We’ve endured more than this moon-eyed freak ever has in both of her lives combined! We know what it’s like to suffer. She doesn’t.**_

 _Suffering comes in many ways._ Katherine growled, impatient with her past self.

 _ **Yeah, but I think being raped and abused by four adult men several times takes the cake.**_ Past Katherine said bitterly, and she seemed to be rolling her eyes wherever she was in Katherine’s head.

“I’m sorry you felt that way.” Katherine said softly after a moment.

Joan whimpered pitifully. “And you say you’re awful.” She propped her elbows on the table and clutched her head. “If you heard the thoughts I have about you, you’d be running for the hills.”

 _It’s my fault._ Katherine thought sadly. _I did this to her. I broke this poor, innocent girl._

 ** _No,_** Past Katherine said. _**We didn’t do anything. We aren’t some monster, SHE is. You heard what she said. And, besides, we can’t be a bad person. We went through hell, we’re allowed to be—**_

 _You think that’s an excuse?_ Katherine scoffed. _Just because we were abused and taken advantage of, doesn’t mean we can’t be a bitch. Victims of trauma can still be assholes, idiot. And, news flash, we were one._

Past Katherine merely huffed and probably rolled her eyes again.

 _ **Doesn’t matter now. The damage is done. She’s broken, as you said. She can’t be fixed.**_ She said. _**Look at her, she’s already falling to pieces.**_

_What?_

Katherine looked up sharply to see Joan bracing both hands on the table and swaying slightly. The flush on her cheeks was now much darker than the dust and paint.

All it took was a cough to rattle her frame and make her fall.

Katherine was out of her chair before she even knew what she was really doing, controlled by those new motherly instincts. She ran over to Joan, who now laid dazed on the floor, blinking up at the ceiling. She propped her up in her arms; her face was so hot when she touched it. And her eyes—oh, her eyes…

 _“Moon Eyes! Moon Eyes! Moon Eyes!”_ The chant she used to yell when Joan passed by echoed in her head, but she couldn’t help it because when she gazed down at those twin pits of molten silver, all she saw was a pale creature of night in her arms. Its eyes were pieces of the moon it stole from the sky and shoved into the deep hollows in their face, hoping to make them more human, but it didn’t. It never did. The moonborn white alien remained outlandish and otherworldly.

Joan shuddered in her hold. She tried to blink even faster to ward off apparent dizziness, but it did little to help her.

“You’re running a fever.” Katherine told her. “Joan, you’re burning up.”

“Why do you care?” Joan choked out.

“I’m worried about you, honey.”

“But _why_?” Joan sobbed, tears now cascading down her cheeks, like the moons glowing in her eye sockets were melting from the heat of her fever. “You don’t care about me! Nobody cares about me!”

 ** _That’s true._** Past Katherine put in helpfully, but Katherine shoves her voice into the darker reaches of her mind.

“People do care about you.” Katherine assured the weeping girl. “I promise. I promise they do.”

Joan gazed up at her before the fever consumed her. She went limp in the queen’s arms and, for a moment, Katherine saw something paler than her moons—the whites of her eyes when they rolled back in her skull.

—

 _ **You really shouldn’t touch her.**_ Past Katherine chided as Katherine was feeling Joan’s forehead again. It was wet with sweat again, despite her already wiping it off two times in that hour.

 _Shut up._ Katherine growled.

She looked down at Joan, who she had carried into the master bedroom and tucked into the bed. The girl was breathing harshly through her mouth, soft whimpers and murmurs falling from her pale lips every once and awhile. Katherine had done her best to make her comfortable, but she was still quite new to the whole caretaker thing, even with the memories of watching Jane tend to her so many times before.

 _ **Those were the days,**_ Past Katherine sighed wistfully.

_I thought I told you to shut up._

_**You don’t tell me what to do. I can do and say whatever I want.** _

_You can’t control me._

_**For now.** _

Katherine shuddered. She hated how ominous that sounded.

She got up from where she was perched on the side of the bed and looked around the room for pajamas. She hated snooping in Joan’s clothes of all things (when she accidentally opened the undergarment drawer, she slammed it shut with so much force she was surprised the whole thing didn’t explode into tiny wood shavings), but the poor girl was probably sweating through what she was wearing right down and that wouldn’t be too comfortable.

After a bit of searching, she eventually found a fresh shirt and some shorts, but it wasn’t the only thing she dug out. In a drawer near the ground, beneath a thin blanketing of folding T-shirts, there were papers and canvases and notebooks. Without really wanting to, she began to look through them.

 ** _Oh my god,_** Past Katherine muttered in her brain.

They were drawings of her. Her from the past. Not all of them, but—there were just so many.

Paintings of her bloody or dead or drawn to look like a succubus, paintings too smeared with red to see what had been originally displayed upon the surface, paintings that were ripped on her face, as if Joan had taken a knife to the canvases and cut it to shreds. There were half finished paintings with tear stains and marks where the paint bled with the droplets and paintings that had horrible things scribbled around an abstract headshot of her face. There was even a painting of a dead cat with a hot pink rhinestone collar.

And then there were paintings of Joan crying, Joan bleeding pink blood, Joan dying or already dead, Joan hanging from a noose and Joan cutting her wrists and cutting her throat and cutting every inch of her body until she had scraped off every shred of unwanted and unliked flesh—until she was more like Katherine was.

There was a painting of a ram with red paint that Katherine was sure wasn’t actually red paint.

And, underneath all the canvas carnage, there was one larger than the rest. A painting of a hideous, skeletal creature as pale as snow, but with eyes that were somehow even paler. They were too big, too. Its stomach was so sunken—she could see every rib poking out from the bleached flesh. The fingers were too long and tipped with short black claws. There were cuts engraved all over its body that wept blue blood.

Somehow, Katherine knew exactly what this was supposed to depict.

 ** _Moon Eyes._** Past Katherine said bitterly.

Katherine screwed her eyes shut, trying to block out the memory of a plan she once had to spread the cruel joke on social media. She gripped the edges of the canvas tightly.

 _What have I done?_ She thought. _This poor girl… I ruined her._

 ** _You didn’t do anything._** Past Katherine said, miffed. **_And neither did I. Some people just get subjected to bad things. Like we did in back then. Not that this is anything like that. That was a real problem, this is just a little schoolyard teasing. She broke herself by losing her mind over this. I mean, look at these paintings. She’s insane._**

 _You’re terrible._ Katherine growled. _Will you grow up? I’ve accepted what we did, why can’t you?_

 ** _Because she doesn’t deserve your pity._** Past Katherine responded distastefully. _**She’s a nobody, and you know that. Nobody even knows WHY she came back. There are hundreds of more important people that could have been reincarnated, our sister, for example, but NO. We got this moonborn, moon-eyed, night owl, pale FREAK.**_

SHUT UP! Katherine roared. With a blast of blazing fury, she forcibly threw her past self into the darkest reaches of her mind.

Blackness soon filled her head like inky bile. Silence.

Katherine put all the canvases back into the drawer and closed it. She stood up quietly and crept back over to the bed. She picked up the rag lying in the bowl of water she had brought in and began to wipe away the sweat that had accumulated on Joan’s face.

 _You did this to her,_ She whispered to herself, this time with her own voice, not her creaking past one’s. _You ruined her. Broke her. She’s messed up, now, because of you._

She put the rag back into the bowl, then watched Joan sleep. Her face was scrunched up, as if she was in pain even in her sleep.

 ** _She doesn’t know pain._** The hiss of her past self bubbled in her ears. **_If you want to pity her so badly, then give her a reason to be in pain. Hurt her more than we were hurt. Scar her until even Jane will have to feel bad for her. If that’s truly what you want. Because nobody will believe she’s hurt until you make it visible._**

And so, Katherine peeled back Joan’s eyelids and dug her fingers into her eye sockets. She scooped up the pale orbs and pulled them out of their black cavities. She held the moons in her hands. She rolled them around in her palms, feeling their smoothness and squishiness and warmth against her skin, and then they lolled around and blinked up at her.

Joan jerked awake with an anguished wail. The moons lodged in her face are so wide and so pale and so very lonely, like they longed to be back in the sky. Katherine’s fingers twitched; she thought she could feel the webs of blood dripping through them.

 _ **You could always put her out of her misery.**_ Past Katherine said. **_Nobody would miss her. Nobody would even look for her._**

But Katherine silenced her voice before she could project another horrendous vision in her brain. When she reached out to Joan, she didn’t go for her eyes, but rather her cheeks, and she cupped them tenderly, like she was trying to hold Joan together while she was about to shatter.

“Shh, shh,” She hushed the weeping girl. “It’s okay, sweetie. It was just a dream. You’re alright. I’m not going to let anything hurt you. I promise.”

It’s the least she could do, seeing as she was the one who stole the moons and put them in her head in the first place.


End file.
